The rise of digital goods requires quality storage
As the price of crypto soars, many people are quickly becoming interested in the underlying technology of cryptocurrencies and how it can be used. One increasingly popular use case of blockchain technology is non-fungible tokens, often referred to as NFTs. As of recent, mainstream players such as Samsung, Formula 1, and Nike have announced they will be entering the NFT space. But what exactly does this mean?
What Are NFTs
A non-fungible token (NFT) is a digital item in which the ownership of each token is blockchain-managed. Commonly known NFTs include digital collectibles such as CryptoKitties and digital properties in Decentraland. There are many other ways that NFTs can be leveraged, including:
- Tokenized collectibles, like baseball cards
- Virtual assets such as domain names
- Tokenized digital art
- Gaming items such as rare skins and weapons
- Tokenized assets such as property ownership
Generally speaking, NFTs, or items that would make for a good NFT, are unique and provably rare.
NFTs Need To Be On the Most Secure Blockchain System
Valuable assets should always be supported by secure proof of ownership — blockchain has proven to be the ideal way to ensure security and safe value transfers of aforementioned assets. This is mostly due to the immutability of blockchain technology. Given that NFTs, in many cases, can be viewed as a valuable asset, either due to their intrinsic value or uncommonness, it is best to store NFTs on a highly secure blockchain.
Horizen is a blockchain that is very well suited for storing NFTs, and it’s supported by over 40,000 unique nodes that protect the integrity of the data on the blockchain. Because of this, nobody has the authority to dispute the authenticity of your NFT ownership once it has been recorded on the Horizen blockchain.
Potential NFTs on Horizen
The Horizen ecosystem enables developers to create their own fully customized blockchains on the Horizen platform. This means that anybody can create their own blockchain for NFTs and games where NFTs are already built-in. Horizen’s interoperable blockchains can create an additional way for NFTs to be utilized. For example, if you built a game similar to CryptoKitties where certain tokens were worth thousands, what if you wanted to store them in an easily viewable location with your other valuables on chain? If another person were to create a collectible storage chain, then users could possibly move their CryptoKitties-style token from the game over to the storage chain and then back again when you decided to trade or sell the token.
This is just one example of the many that could be created on this platform that major companies like Celsius, Sikoba, and Dragonchain have been aligning themselves with.
Dappradar has learned that a gaming project has partnered with Horizen which could bring many NFT-based games to their ecosystem. Word is that Horizen stated that additional partnership details and potential NFT use cases would be unveiled this quarter. Currently, the Horizen team is working to migrate their dapp building platform, Zendoo, to the mainchain in 2021.
Status of the NFT Market
The NFT market is highly concentrated on the Ethereum blockchain. However, newer blockchain solutions, including Horizen, are joining the ecosystem and are aiming to tap into the market of digital collectibles, game assets, and digital art. Below a graph of the trading activity on the five biggest marketplaces on the Ethereum blockchain.
The most active market for NFT trading is currently the AtomicMarket on the Wax blockchain. According to our data there are more than 9 thousand users per month on there. Rarible has had 6500 active wallets over the same time period, while Opensea has just over five thousand active wallets. In general we’re seeing tremendous growth in trading activity and the adoption of non-fungible tokens in new and upcoming blockchain applications.